This is sort of a return to my previous post, “Are we all the marriage type”.
Something hit me for a minute, and made me think of seriously considering finding a “father” for my son. We were at the movie theater today, waiting around for our movie to start when my son asked to play one of the many games in the lobby. You know those games where you insert a token and either drive the plane, race cars, poker, and alike. I realized that I had no clue, and my son would be better off doing these with a man – his father.
Don’t get me wrong, my son has a biological father, whom he has a relationship with. But when I say, “I need a father for my son”, this is to imply that I need a man who will be there to take on shared parenting with me. I need a man [maybe I should confess now that I think I am heterosexual, and hoping you have a sense of humor), who will love my son and allow himself to take on the responsibility of caring for me together with me. In a way, I think I might just be saying that, I need to get married, right?
Well, my current son-father relationship is not my ideal expectation. Those who know me will tell you that I never thought I would be a parent nor ever put myself in a compromising situation where I would suddenly become a parent. I agreed to be a parent with someone I thought had my best interests at heart. I insisted that I did not want marriage, I have cold feet. But I believed him when he said he wanted me to carry his baby. I know this is hard talk..but so is life!
So, we had the baby out of joyous explosion. But the last five years of his life, I have just about done the parenting on my own, with his father as a guest in his life. While I have spent the last three and a-half years outside the same geographical space with his daddy, I never at any one point denied him the chance to come visit his son. In fact, I kept the lines of communication liberally open. I would pass on my phone number whenever I moved to a new country, and passed on the phone to my son to speak to his father whenever he called. I tend to feel that to him, this child is an “accessory”, to show off to everyone – look at my son. I am his father! Without ever planning to put in full-time.
As someone who has been to hell and back, while a mother of a little one, I know that, “Impossible is Nothing”; “Way gives in to a Will”; and Children for-real bring blessings. I have received many blessings because of my son. And I have sworn that I will ALWAYS act in the “Best interest of my son”. I left a lavish income in Uganda, to bring my son back to America. Uncertain that the job market will absorb me again; leaving a large family safety-net who were co-raising my son with me, the less certainty about life back in America. Except for the stingy politics and mal-administration of the ruling government of Uganda, I had a life! I left everything to bring my son back to his American family and to allow him partake of his American experience.
Yet again, it is a sweet-bitter return, and a strong reminder that, perhaps I should breakdown and finally accept that, YES! I need a man permanently in my life. A man who loves me, as much as I love him. A man to be my partner for life, and to agree to raise my son with me.
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